Only a month after the Canada Line opened, some Cambie Street merchants already seeing uptick in busniess.

Maybe you saw this Suzanne Fournier piece in the Province about how Cambie store owners still aren’t seeing much of an uptick in their business following the opening of the Canada Line:

The Canada Line has been carrying commuters for almost a month, giving a big boost to some businesses but not much to those who bore the brunt of almost four years of construction chaos in their midst.

That’s the story you get from the headline, the subhead, the lede, and the five paragraphs after that.

But that’s not at all what Fournier’s article shows. If you read deep enough down — all the way to the seventh paragraph — you find out that some Cambie business owners have already seen more customers since the Canada Line opened. So if Cambie business owners are giving the Canada Line mixed reviews, why does Fournier work so hard to make the story seem uniformly negative?

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4 Responses to “Only a month after the Canada Line opened, some Cambie Street merchants already seeing uptick in busniess.”

I really don’t see the slant you’re talking about. The lede clearly says that some are seeing uptick while some aren’t, and the story contains both those elements. Just because the negative elements came first doesn’t equal bias news, and the story is hardly uniformly negative.

Also, it’s not surprising some cambie village merchants aren’t getting a lot more business from the canada line. Let’s face it, it is a long walk. It’s too bad there is no station there.

Tessa — Yeah, you’re right about that lede, and I was too grumpy about it. Fair point.

But I think the headline and subhead are uniformly negative, which misrepresents what’s really going on. And I do also think that considerations such as placement of different points of view higher or lower in an article (also word counts devoted to different sides if a story) *are* ways that reporters can shape narratives. Partly, I think, this is because reporters often write articles with the knowledge that most people aren’t going to get to the end — which they don’t — so the stuff the reporter wants to be high-impact goes up top.

I wouldn’t call that “bias” exactly, because it never really requires anyone to distort actual facts. I’m just interested in how facts get arranged into narratives, and how some narratives seem really popular — like, e.g., Translink is Teh Suck. That one just seems to write stories all on its own sometimes. . . .

Uh oh, now I’m rambling. Long day.

Oh, but you’re right that a station around 16th would be good. That’s not even one of the “planned” stations for the suture, is it?

It isn’t, it was completely bypassed. 33rd and 57th are the only planned stations in Vancouver. I can understand where you’re coming from, but in some stories you simply can’t write both sides in every single paragraph. It won’t make sense, and a reader will get pretty darn confused and won’t read any of it. So, one has to go above the other, while still letting people know there’s good news further down in the lede.

As for the headline, yeah. That’s a different issue: headlines are often written by editors who sometimes don’t read the stories themselves, though. It’s a pet peeve of mine.

You are right, though, that stories can be subtly shaped in ways that do change how they’re interpreted, and it’s worth challenging.

You know, I guess I could understand the decision not to build a 16th ave station right away. But it weird that it’s not even planned. (Although, what’s really involved in saying that a station is “planned”? “Planned” or not, it’s still going involve digging big hole. So maybe it’ll happen eventually. . . .)